


As Fresh Meat Loves Salt

by sloppy



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppy/pseuds/sloppy
Summary: Hak’s exorcist grandfather tricks him into a stint as a vampire’s bodyguard, effectively pulling him out of early retirement.





	1. The Housekeeper

**Author's Note:**

> What this story is really going to be about: equivocal overtones and a judgmental Hak.
> 
> Title is from [this English fairytale](http://www.authorama.com/english-fairy-tales-13.html) and has absolutely no correlation other than the fact that I like it.

Winter curled in gently, slow like a new lover, withering the stubborn vines intertwining the porch railings and dusting the front yard’s sycamore branches with white. The cool air raised goosebumps on Hak’s skin despite his layers and he heaved a sigh before turning the key.

He didn’t say, _I’m home_. Didn’t drop his coat and bag right on the welcome mat. Didn’t check his landline for messages. Hak didn’t say, _I’m home_ because it wasn’t home, not really, not when the shabby tatami he’d finally gotten used to when he moved into his studio apartment was replaced by a marble tile flooring beneath him, and certainly not when the only working phone in the entire _two acre_ estate was in a sitting room three floors above he did not have access to. 

Hak swerved to entrance of the grand staircase. Any modesty from the exterior of the building vanished entering this room, where the Victorian decors were the least innocuous additions. The windows were hidden by drapes and the only light sources bled through pentagonal skylights on the ceiling and candles, lit daily, illuminated the dark, casting flickering shadows against the walls. It was a grim and lonely sight—a haunted mansion, an abandoned luxury. Even after two months living here, the ostentatiousness still left a taste of unease against his tongue.

“You’re tracking dirt on my floors.” Yoon appeared from the side door leading to the servants’ quarters, mildly annoyed but thankfully not livid. The young housekeeper wore his apron around his neck, untied at the waist like he was mid-removal, and a broom in his vice grip. “Were the three days you were away enough to digress you back to the beast that you are?”

Home sweet home _._ Hak grinned, saying, “I’m back. Merry Christmas.”

He outstretched a hand to take the broom to clean but Yoon was unflappable. “No, you won’t do it right.” The younger boy looked on, no longer badgering, and continued a bit kinder this time, “How was your grandfather?”

Guilt prickled his gut momentarily. “Loud, like the rest of the house,” he replied. Hak nearly forgot the excuse he had churned out about his grandfather being ill, so ill he just ached for Hak to come over for the holidays. The only ache in correlation to that man was a headache. It wasn’t a complete lie, fortunately, as Son Mundok had truly been particularly noisy that weekend. Hak just didn’t like the concern scrawled on Yoon’s face whenever he mentioned it.

“You have a big family?” inquired Yoon.

“Something like that,” muttered Hak in return, then turned to the door Yoon had come from. Although he knew what the answer would be, he still asked, “Anyone home?”

“If that’s your roundabout way to ask where Yona is, she’s up in her room,” Yoon replied, focused on tying up his apron and fishing out a bandana for his hair. Then, as if Hak needed to hear it aloud: “It’s lunchtime.”

Both the long and little finger on the pale face of the grandfather clock embedded into the wall pointed up at the number twelve, which was the first thing he noted upon entering the room.

“I get it,” Hak said, and he did. To avoid that topic and its implications he quickly added, “I’ll get settled. You know where to find me if you need me.”

 

* * *

Hak wasn’t stupid by any means, so of course he had hightailed out of the manor the night he discovered his employer was a blood-sucking vampire. 

There hadn’t been any snow then, but the wind had attacked him like spiky tacs and the stars in were dim white dots scattered across a deadened sky, and it was like a joke, how the weather did so well mirroring how Hak had felt when he couldn’t even identify it himself. His combat boots turned muddy at its welts, ignoring the weight of accumulating dirt caking his soles, and stopped just outside the iron gates that introduced the property.

A dragon loomed above him. Emblazoned on metal and nearly imperceptible as anything but fancy grating in pitch-black night, the insignia only fueled his betrayal and anger. Apprehension was present, too, lurking in nooks and knotting in crannies, but he extinguished it best as he could and did what he meant to do when he fled his room:

“You set me up,” Hak spit into the receiver.

“It’s good to hear you’re doing well,” Mundok greeted wryly. He had picked up after a single ring, as if prepared for the conversation. Knowing the geezer, that was likely. “Are the new accommodations not to your style?”

In a fit of childish anger, Hak kicked a pebble lying inches from his toe and sent it flying towards the bushes. “Don’t give me that. I told you I wouldn’t be a part of this. Not anymore.”

Mundok sighed, long enough for Hak to recollect his thoughts. On the other end, his grandfather sounded weary, which meant he must be home, because he would never use a tone other than commanding if he was at work. Hak had probably caught him getting ready for sleep or maybe having been woken from it, and it was easy to imagine him in his old yukata, with that familiar itchy beard growing saltier every year, leaning on his futon and speaking gravely to the phone Han-Dae forced upon him on his birthday. Maybe Tae-Yeon had dragged his blankets to his grandfather’s room, feeling particularly lonesome, and was keeping him company with the sound of his soft snoring, or maybe the kid was asleep in his own room, safe and warm. Thinking of Tae-Yeon overwhelmed Hak with a wave of heat, a hearth kindling in his chest, as if he was tucked in bed along with his baby brother, and it gave him the needed mental fortitude to listen.

“This isn’t a life you can simply quit, Hak,” his grandfather said, which wasn’t any different from what Hak expected him to say. “I should know, with all my years. This was something I couldn’t approach you about with all the details initially. I can tell you now.”

He scoffed. Hak leaned against the grating, absentmindedly landing his elbow atop the dragon’s belly. “Yeah, because if you had told me before, I wouldn’t have taken the job. Guess I was just too distracted by all the zeroes in the stipend to notice. Seriously? A vampire? Why go through all the trouble of working as a live-in bodyguard if I was only going to slay my charge?”

“Hak,” Mundok interrupted Hak’s grousing in a tone so overtly authoritarian it made him snap his head up in surprise, even if he wasn’t actually present. “Under no circumstances are you to harm, injure, or, let alone, _kill_ Princess Yona.”

He cracked his fingers one-handedly, numb with the cold. “What’s this about?”

“As you should know, the vampire clan nearest to us has agreed to comply a tentative truce,” said Mundok, which was a fact Hak actually had not been aware of but left uncorrected. He had been off the radar for a good while now and never thought to keep up with any news; supernatural or otherwise. “Kouka may not be the biggest in number, but they are one of the oldest, with prestige and influence. They offered to cooperate fully with any information regarding other rivaling clans, along with no negative interference to nearby humans. In exchange, we are to aid in limiting the number of lower level vampires gone rogue in their district and to grant protection—”

_“Protection?”_

His grandfather continued without hesitation. “Yes, protection for the royal family in times of need. Don’t think it to be immunity, as it is not, and if the line of the truce is in any way blurred or crossed we have full obligation to bring them to justice. That is our duty as exorcists.”

_That is our duty as exorcists_. Hak recalled that holy maxim from Mundok and the times it had affected him: when he was six and curious, nine and mesmerized, twelve and heady, fifteen and apathetic, and lastly when he was eighteen and relinquished, having hitched the first bus to the next province over. The months he spent away hadn’t done much to diminish his reluctance to be pulled back into this old life.

“How does this tie in with babysitting a fanged princess? She’s not the regent crown, surely, living in a place like this.” Hak would have sensed if there were dozens of vampires crawling around the premises, and even if he couldn’t, it didn’t align to any logic as to why a princess would live secluded with only a handful of servants on a hilltop away from most civilization. “If this was a security gig, couldn’t you have gotten Tae-Woo’s lazy butt to cover it? He’s the next Head in line. He should act like it. Actually, now that I think about it, there are ten others from the top of my head more suitable for this job than I an.”

“I expected you would need the money,” said Mundok. It was such a simple excuse Hak felt annoyance flare up once more. Before he could throw in a rebuttal, Mundok shut him up with his next words. “She’s in hiding, Hak. A fugitive, one could call her. You see, the ones who made the truce were remnants of the last dynasty. After the death of her father, the king, rifts have been forming all over the region and sects have been made here and there. King Il’s reign had been shaky, at best, and now there is a scramble after the throne that even other rival clans aim to seize. The poor girl has been thrust between it all.”

“Shouldn’t she have inherited the crown?” asked Hak, rolling back all information he knew of vampire monarchy laws, which comprised of basically nothing.

“To answer that, Hak, you must understand—the regency of a king or queen vampire lasts to their deaths. And unlike popular folklore, not all vampires have a lifespan as long as the legends. The ones that _do_ have closest bloodlines to the purest of vampires, which are the ones, until now, who have monopolized the reigns for thousands of years.”

Bloodline elitists, then. The words struck a cord within him and a puzzle piece slotted into place. “Until now, you said.” He turned a thought over, then said slowly, testing the waters, “There was a coup.”

A slight scratch from the phone sounded like his grandfather’s beard had tickled the receiver. “Her cousin. It was he who killed her father and took the throne.” Mundok, for the second time that night, sighed. That was more than Hak could handle. “The king’s older brother was a royal pureblood, the crown prince once upon a time, but he bore a child with a human and the act disqualified his family from inheritance. He and his wife died due to certain circumstances, not long after, and the boy was taken in by his uncle.”

Then the boy grew up, robbed of his birthright. Hak imagined a figure so overtaken with revenge—let it simmer in his veins and eat up his heart as he planned spilling blood while at the table of his own benefactors—and wondered if he had a right to judge. He had been raised to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, become the next Head of his family and Chief Exorcist, yet he had buckled under that pressure. Like a coward, he had fled, but like a mule, he stayed stubborn. Why anyone would want to actively seek to carry a mantle as heavy as kingship was indescribably purposeless to someone like Hak, who wanted nothing more than to live life as he pleased with no added chains.

But Hak had known the moment he stepped out of the manor and into the icy cold, that he could have kept walking and never stopped, refusing to let the gates up front and the lethargic night skies to seal him in. He could have never called his grandfather for an explanation. He could have ran away, like always, because he was used to that, and escaped the repercussions.

He could have, but the point of the matter was that he didn’t. Maybe there was some part of him, deep and buried within, that was simply tired of running. No matter how small it was there was no way to ignore it now he knew it existed, lest it grow rampant into something he could not control. Hak was all about control.

“Fine,” said Hak. The word scorched his lips as it came out, an admitted defeat for a battle he had been fighting for so long. “I’ll do it. I’ll stay.”

It was like he could _see_ the old man smiling. At least in his voice there was no smugness to give him away. “It’s your choice,” he told him, though that wasn’t as true as Hak wished it to be.

Hak’s only condition was to go back home for a weekend and give Mundok a talking to, make it clear that this was his last dance with devils and ensure his grandfather would no longer sneakily place him in situations where he had no say in being. However, his ulterior motive was really to have an excuse to see Tae-Yeon, something which he had been wanting to do for a while but never had the courage to ask about. Hak had even bought his Christmas present a whole month before and it burned, lonely and waiting, at the bottom of his go-bag.

“I have to make up a justification for taking a holiday off so early into the job,” Hak said, “though it might be a little easier if they feel any guilt over the fact that I’d just walked into the mistress of the manor sinking her fangs into the chef not thirty minutes ago. I’ve never seen a vampire that red before, and not just because of the blood that stained them.”

Mundok had laughed, and that time, so did Hak.

 

* * *

 

Most of the manor staff were young, but no one as young as Yoon, who was still working his way through his first year of high school. He was aiming for college and needed money to do it, plus this way he had free boarding along with a steady flow of income, and altogether Yoon was shaping up to be the ideal teenager all parents around the world thought only lived in How to Not Mess Up Raising My Child pamphlet examples.

“School’s a joke,” Hak told him once, a useless opinion among other things, though an honest opinion nonetheless.

In reply, the boy had said, dryly, “Doesn’t make it any less avoidable,” and left it at that. Despite his words, Hak got the inkling the kid was prodigy genius. He would have gotten to that conclusion even without Yoon’s constant reminders that he, in fact, _was_ a prodigy genius, a pretty one at that. If he wasn’t cooking or cleaning, the boy was in the common room leafing through a book, studying a book, or examining a book. He was never seen with the same book more than once; Hak was lucky if he didn’t fall asleep past the table of contents.

Truth be told, Yoon was his favorite. His official designation was housekeeper, but he cooked better than the chef and ran the house better than the butler and Hak might have been only a little biased because he was the only other single full-human in the building. The camaraderie Hak felt was probably one-sided, though, because while Hak spent most of his hours wandering the empty rooms of the manor and fiddling with his exorcist equipment that he had let dust in its containers months prior, Yoon only spent an allotted period of time with him before fleeing to the Princess’s side. That was fair enough; Hak wasn’t the most enthralling of company. 

Like Hak, before Mundok had swept him up for his collection, Yoon was an orphan. He had been introduced to his current job by a human priest affiliated with the last vampire Kouka king (which no one but Hak found frighteningly ironic) and by the way Yoon spoke of him, you’d think the man was responsible for hanging the moon and stars. Hak decided he would keep his grandfather away from him, in case the oldest Son felt like sprinkling some candy and picking up another poverty-ridden orphan child to nurture into a ghoul-crushing, ghost-expelling, vampire-slaying nightmare. The risk was genuine.

That night Hak returned from holidaying was spent bothering Yoon in the kitchens after he unpacked—which was Hak merely dumping his rucksack that contained three-fourths of his belongings onto his bed, then switching off his gross military combats to indoor slippers as to prevent any more of Yoon’s griping. 

It was not a surprise that the chef, a flamboyant pain-in-the-ass they called Jae-Ha, was no where to be found within the kitchens. In all likeliness he was with the footman, who he pestered frequently, or the Princess, who he pestered less frequently, but often enough that it was still an option. Jae-Ha bothered Hak, too, when he could find him, and probably thought that his hounding was something close to endearing. The footman with the bandaged right arm did not share that sentiment.

“You’re going to have to face them some time,” said Yoon, stirring a pot, already correcting a mistake the chef had caused by throwing a pinch too much which turned the meal inedible.

Hak made himself useless by monopolizing the counter stool. In front of him were various cookbooks he pretended to read, and looking at the pictures for no reason but to have something to do. When he heard this, Hak flipped a page to one without pictures and said in reply, “Hmm.”

“Hak,” Yoon said, pausing his stirring and catching Hak’s attention. “I know the truth’s been, well, weird all in all, but you’re a sensible guy. I don’t know why you have to be so difficult about confrontation. Are you afraid?”

He snorted at the insinuation. “No.”

“Then why don’t you want to talk to Yona?”

The question presented was a loaded one. If he spoke to her, he’d have to address the fact she was supernatural, and eventually, because he hadn’t hitched a ride to the back country or fell to his knees the second it was revealed what she was, he’d need to admit he was an exorcist, which would lead to even more conundrums—none of which Hak felt like confronting anytime soon. He was the master of evading responsibility, after all.

“She’s a brat,” he said instead.

Yoon’s eyebrow rose in suspicion but said nothing more. Together, they worked and read in companionable silence. The aroma of the soup wafted into the air. The cookbook pages crinkled occasionally. 

Hak skimmed a recipe for potatoes au gratin: _Preheat the oven to four-hundred degrees. Butter a large baking dish with the butter. Slice the potatoes into sticks, and then cut the sticks to create a dice. Combine the cream and milk in a bowl. Add the flour, salt and some pepper_ —

In front of him now, slammed atop the text, was a tray laden with a tea cup set and a kettle. Porcelain and decorated, the set shone brightly at Hak, almost teasingly. “What’s this?”

“Bring that upstairs.” Yoon didn’t even look up from his duties around the room after depositing the tray. “It’s her chamomile before bed.”

Irritated, Hak began, “This isn’t my job and I _told_ you—”

“Or else no dinner for you,” concluded the young man. Yoon smirked. “I thought you liked clams?”

Sighing in withdrawal, he lifted the tray. Hak ought to reconsider who he thought to be his favorite.

 

* * *

 

Vampires in storybooks had gaunt-like complexions and turned into bats and slept in coffins during the day. Vampires in Hak’s world liked the water for their tea piping hot and wore fuzzy pink slippers and asked things like, “My split-ends aren’t that noticeable from far away, are they?”

His mouth twitched into a shark grin. “Looks like the same lion’s mane,” he said, only because he knew it was the wrong answer. “If I come closer will it come to life and strangle me?”

She bared her fangs. Hak rolled his eyes.

The princess was a small thing, coming up to maybe his shoulder at most. She tippy-toed whenever she felt like getting on a few inches and complained whenever he’d obviously show no signs of shrinkage, nor clues of her own growth. Yet, barring his advantage in height and nearly every physical aspect, nine out of ten times—Yona could be mountainous.

“How was your trip home? Mister Son getting any better?” 

She hopped off her four-poster and paced around the table he left the tea on, hunter-gaze flickering between the tray and Hak. Her eyes—saturated violet and fiery amber and glassy marble all at once—drove screws right into the sinews beneath his skin. Those were what clued him in the first time they met, that this was not any ordinary girl. Yona would never be just anyone to him, and for that he hated her.

But not really.

“Are we going to get to the point?” he asked.

“I think I’m supposed to ask you that,” Yona replied, no longer playing niceties. She had stopped pacing and stood only feet before him, staring unabashedly. Her silk shift she wore for bed brushed her ankles. It was a mere ten degrees warmer indoors and somehow he felt himself beginning to swelter. “I understand you are an exorcist, and that instead of killing me, you are stationed to protect me. But I do not know you. If you show any inkling of harmful intent towards any of my charges within this building, I can’t promise your own safety.”

Crossing his arms, he said, “Then try.”

“What?” She blinked.

“Get to know me.” Hak closed his eyes, then opened them. Resolve filled him whole. “I am Son Hak, adopted ward of Son Mundok, Head Leader of the Son Exorcists. On my eighteenth birthday I broke the region record for highest amount of lethally-categorized paranormal legal executions at 89 demon exorcisms, 34 ghoul cleansings, 102 ghost expulsions, and thirteen rogue vampire slayings. I quit two days later.

“By habit, I wake up at dawn,” he barreled on, before she interrupted. “I hate being sunburnt. Chocolate makes me sick, and I think sweet potatoes are the best vegetable.” He paused, thinking carefully what to say next. “All the money I’ve ever earned goes to my six year old brother. He’s on his second year of remission from leukemia and throwing salt at ghosts pays no hospital bills. Tae-Yeon doesn’t have my blood, but I’d bleed for him.”

At this, Yona wavered visibly. “Princess, I’ve never harmed anything or anyone in impropriety. Those beings I exorcised were doing harm against people. As far as I know, you and everyone here is innocent. Real vampires don’t kill. You’re the most real one I’ve met.”

She smiled a watery smile, pushing back her mane of red hair and taking a deep breath. “Okay. I—say I believe you.” The way she poised herself showed she already did. “You could have told me upfront!”

“That chocolate makes me sick?”

“That you’re an exorcist,” she corrected, pouting, and he glanced away for second. “I only know because someone from the main house called over the weekend while you were gone. A bit too late, as you know. It would have saved some trouble and confusion after the, um, incident a few days ago.”

Hak feigned ignorance as she became embarrassed. “You mean when I found ya chomping on that droopy eyed guy like a limp piece of cabbage?”

She covered her reddening blush. Hak distinctly recalled her gesturing similarly that time as Jae-Ha complained of her mouth’s sudden distance from his neck. He figured the man was masochistic from the get go.

“I guess it’s my turn to share now,” she said, recovering from her mortification. She brushed a strand from her face and tucked it behind an ear. Red was his favorite color up until he met her. “It’s only fair.”

Hak, unperturbed, settled onto the regal divan upright against the wall and shrugged. He thought: be indifferent, play the part, ignore how much you don’t want to be here. He said: “Whatever you want.”

She smiled, this time without hiding her canines. “I am Princess Yona, daughter of King Il, next heiress to the Kouka crown. I’m sixteen years old. I am… an only child. I like shopping for pretty dresses and horseback riding in the rain. I’ve seen terrible things, but my resolve has never wavered, and I will achieve whatever goal I need in order to move forward.

“As a pureblood vampire, I currently hold reign over four vassals, three whom are fledglings, and care for them as they care for me. Yoon is my best friend and it would be very difficult to adjust to a life without him.” She got a bit sly in the end and added, “Most recently, I’ve met a very lazy exorcist who I hope will become my friend, too.”

Barking a laugh, Hak said, “We’ll see about that, Princess.”

Yona poured herself a cup of tea. He watched the condensation from the heat make her stirrer drip, examined the length of her lashes as she looked down. Hak wondered how long he’d have to endure until he got used to those eyes. Maybe forever, but he knew he wasn’t that lucky.

 

* * *

 

His delivery must have been less than suboptimal because Yoon was still staring at him dubiously, arms straight at his side, gripping his apron strings in heated tension. Here they were, Yoon standing defenselessly in front of the electric oven range, Hak at his designated stool, and the only constant was the sound of the boiling water and the kitchen timer, ticking away. Hak had never revealed this much information about himself in a day, let alone a single evening, before this night, and it felt like peeling off a layer of skin, leaving him tender and vulnerable and not at all like the tough guy he really was. Claimed to be. Whatever.

“Right,” said Yoon. His fists refused to slacken. “Okay, sure.”

“Sorry,” said Hak, a weak gesture of forfeit. He was being genuine this time; he really was sorry he never told his closest thing to a companion in this tactfully dubbed “den of mystical beasts” that he, in theory and in practice, was one of those mystical beasts himself. His decision to come clean was a leftover of what transpired with the Princess earlier that night, but obviously he didn’t expound as delicately as he should have. The way the boy was looking at him now—well, Hak felt awfully singled out. It was almost as bad as being under the Princess’s devious scrutiny, only with twice as much guilt and gone was the hovering feeling of fear. 

“But you’re human.”

“I am,” Hak confirmed, and that seemed to ease Yoon’s shoulders, if only by an inch. “Completely, wholly, fully, ninety-nine point nine percent.”

“What makes up the other point one percent?”

“Idiocy.”

His lips quirked traitorously. “Now you’re being generous. It should be much more than that.”

“Fine,” permitted Hak, “maybe point _two_ percent, but that’s as high as it’ll get.”

Sometimes Hak forgot, amongst the counsels and badgering, that Yoon was still a kid—a good, honest, kid who hadn’t even hit his growth spurt yet. He was the lonesome foundation upon which the house of monsters stood, which was pretty telling of character for a fifteen year old. 

The kitchen was a gaunt fixture at this time of the night, not quite haunting despite its residents. All lights were on and fluorescent, the pot steamed a gauzy, stewy sort of fragrance and there was muffled bouts of low music coming from the depths of the hallways. Hak might have not thought of this as home, but there were six other people, including Yoon, who surely thought different. 

“Ik-Soo was a priest,” Yoon said suddenly, turning back around to continue monitoring the pots and pans, just to get busy. Hak could see him shaking, just a little, but he pretended not to notice. “The one who brought me in—I told you already. Well, he was a priest, and not the typical kind. His contacts were… strange. It took a while for him to admit that they weren’t just any regular parishioners, but actual mythical creatures, and even that confession was squeezed out after I literally contracted a demonic possession. That’s sort of why he shipped me away all the way here, in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of—well... You know, I’ve never met an exorcist, but I’ve heard the stories. Exorcists, priests—those two professions aren’t too far off in this realm of crazy. In particular, your kind are known as the protectors. You’re a natural. I should’ve known from the start.”

“Oh,” Hak said dumbly. Filing away all that new information, he tried recalling any occasion that he _protected_ anyone in this place from anything, and came out empty-handed. A natural at protecting? What did that even mean?

“Don’t let that get to your head, though,” Yoon clinched. The kid’s dimples deepened, and Hak knew there wasn’t any ounce of doubt between them now. “It’s big enough as it is.”

Even more dumbly, Hak said, “Too late,” and for the rest of the night, they slurped at their stew and shared anecdotes about paranormal activities and, though he was conscious of Yoon’s occasional knowing glances, did not speak a word about a certain red-headed vampire princess only a few floors above them.

Over the next few days, Hak’s eventual encounters with the other staff members were less prickly and more understated than it was with Yoon, but that was mostly because he prevented any interaction from lasting longer than five minutes. He knew one day they’d confront him since it seemed like the type of thing they had already been talking about behind his back, but Hak figured until then he could do what he wanted before they explicitly ordered him to do anything, which was looking to be—judging from the past days—as likely as him becoming a vampire fledgeling.

What he had going on here at the estate was fragile, a thin dragonfly’s wing. A wrong wind could rip it apart in seconds. Hak referred to it as compromise, and he was nothing if not a man of compromise. With Christmas drawing to a close and New Year’s rearing its promising head, Hak wondered if a raise was out of the question. He figured he deserved one, with what he was about to endure.


	2. The Footman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta for this chapter, Kitana, deserves more love than I can give.

The nearest park from headquarters was the one Hak and the clan kids had ventured out into in childhood. They had played with sticks ripped off trees and pretended they were old enough to wield the staves of their elders. When the other non-exorcist children from the neighborhood came around, the game transformed, almost inexplicably, to knights and dragons.

Knights, gleaming and admirable, slew the villains and saved citizens, rightly becoming heroes. At some point, the games dwindled to the simplicity of good versus evil. Killing because they could. Because they should. Anything inherently evil should naturally be punished, even if unwarranted. It was all a step in prevention loss. Early-on set precaution.

Hak, of course, had been a knight. 

At that same park presently, Tae-Yeon palmed the small package Hak had given him.

“I don’t need a gift,” said the boy, itching beneath his thick-knit scarf before turning the item in his hands. His contemplative manner had been borrowed from someone older and fit like a glove that was too large.

“I can take it back, then.”

Faced with his brother’s teasing, Tae-Yeon stuck out his tongue and held his gift closer to his chest.

There, thought Hak. This is how it should always be.

Out in the empty park, swinging gently alongside each other on the swings, Hak rediscovered a peace within himself, a simple quiet that hadn’t been able to surface through the recent thunder wracking his body. His grip loosened around the swing’s chains. There were red indents in his skin.

“Hak, what are vampires like?”

The breeze had picked up, teeth-chattering. Hak forced a beanie and mittens onto the boy clad in a parka and ignored his mewling. “Annoying.”

Giggling, Tae-Yeon said, “You say that about everything.”

“They can be… difficult.”

“Are they dead?”

“What, like the undead?” Against his will, he imagined a zombie Princess complaining about split ends and stale cookies. He held in a laugh. “Completely different. Vampires aren’t dead, though vassals might have longer lifespans than most creatures.” He held up a peace sign. “We’ve got two types: purebloods, and the ones made by the purebloods in exchange for servitude. Purebloods are just as strong as the average guy, but since it’s the vassal’s job to protect their master, turned-humans pretty much level up in terms of physical prowess. Some kind of social, artificial selection-evolution thing.”

“Oh!” cried Tae-Yeon. “How are vassals made?”

Hak didn’t know much about day-to-day vampire recreational activities, but he’d dealt with enough to grasp, if only vaguely, the methods of becoming a fully-fledged vampire. Supposedly, it was the highest honor to be the vassal of a royal pureblood because it ensured enhanced physical abilities along with perfect health. Too bad Hak was pretty sure it required a ton of blood and a ton of promises he was not fit to keep.

Yoon did mention, or at least drop significant hints, that Princess Yona’s loyal dogs were akin to greenhorns in the world of vampires, outliers that were strangely gifted the right to be beholden to royalty. But the young housekeeper openly stated he had no qualms about the arrangement, considering that they were all strange beasts to him anyway. The blanket statement included Hak. There was not much sense left in him to really argue.

Having lost his bearings thinking of possible formulations, he redirected the conversation. “What’s got you so interested in this stuff, all of a sudden?”

Tae-Yeon couldn’t be called a shy boy. He was glossy and kind and friendly to the point where everyone back at headquarters joked it was astonishing that they’d raised a mild-mannered golden boy in a booming cesspool of crass remarks, where violence took the place of affection. He respected his elders and sang angelically after dinners. His smile was the first the newbies ever saw. It was like Hak’s brother held a piece of the sun inside. There was only so much Hak could do to protect such a blistering and attractive warmth.

In the park beginning to frost, Son Tae-Yeon curled into himself. A light diminishing.

“If I became a vassal to a pureblood,” he murmured, low enough for Hak to hear but not loud enough for the wind to carry, “I wouldn’t have to be sick anymore. I’d be super strong, and I could finally train with everyone, couldn’t I? I wouldn’t have to make it hard for Grandpa or you like I always do. I’m the reason you left, right? Because I got sick—”

Hak kneeled before his brother and embraced him. Wet, hot tears stained Hak’s leather jacket and the gift Tae-Yeon had been holding tumbled down.

“Tae-Yeon, listen,” he said with agonizingly slowed breath. “Mine and Grandfather’s troubles—they belong to us and us only. None of this is your fault. Least of all your sickness. Do you remember what the old man said back at the hospital?”

Tae-Yeon inhaled. “When the nurses banned everyone because thirty-three people in my room was a fire hazard and then Tae-Woo and Han-Dae set off the fire alarm which got them double-banned?”

Hak and Mundok had actually been the guilty ones there, but together they’d been quick to place blame upon the scapegoats. Hak was spirited to hear a little giggle against his chest. “Well, after that, it was just your grandpa and me staying the night. He kissed you and said, ‘Love is a duty without chains.’ We don’t do these things out of pity or obligation—you’re family, and this love is freely given. There’s no need for blood rituals or anything weird like that to fix you when you’re good just the way you are.” Hak shifted so that Tae-Yeon faced him, puffy eyes and pink forehead. “To be honest, if that were to actually happen, you’d age much slower, if at all. You really think you’d be okay with being one-twenty centimeters for hundreds of years?”

The following head shake was frantic.

“That’s what I thought.”

By the time the sun began to set, Tae-Yeon was less teary and had worn down his mystery present’s wrappings, a little smudged from the playground dirt. He never moved to open it, just marveled at the shape, plain and rectangular. On the way home, Hak asked why.

The boy shook his head. “I’m sure I’ll really like whatever it is, but I want to memorize, so that I won’t ever forget.”

“Memorize?”

“How it feels to be loved,” he answered—and there was the light.

At headquarters, Hak was propelled into a vision of sound and color. He needed to go through a whole strain of trick seals that he knew Mundok slapped had on to spite him, and Tae-Yeon skipped happily into the compound with no trials of his own. As expected, Han-Dae and Tae-Woo ambushed Hak when he arrived and, after defeating them, he ordered that they clean the floors outside, even though Hak knew they’d been cleaned the morning before. The others trickled in as night set in. Because he’d not seen them for a while, they insisted on a feast-filled evening, complete with spars and sake.

Han-Dae asked all about the vampires, for he had yet to face one, but Hak kept tight-lipped on the subject and forced a cup of Gekkeikan into whoever he passed by. Tae-Woo, unable to hold his drink, flushed red and fell asleep in the corner of the room, despite being propped up by Han-Dae every time he slumped. Tae-Yeon refused to go to bed until the clock struck past midnight. He closed his eyes. Hak’s gift was a stuffed bear he’d seen in the city once and could only imagine in his brother’s arms. The twins were drunk and tried to set him up on a blind date he dutifully refused on the account that it may have been their estranged cousin. Distraction after distraction led the night to drag on. Mundok and the others met with him in the common room and exchanged views on vampire government, but other than that, there was no mention of Koukan elites or redheads and Hak could pretend that this was all that he had to deal with in life.

 

* * *

 

The relative solitude that Hak had acquired at the manor would not last. For some reason, he hadn’t properly prepared himself for the end, simply basking in the immunity, so some fault lay with him.

“Hak,” greeted the Annoyance, standing outside in the hallway, as if he had been waiting for a while.

“What do you want?” said the Annoyed, having risen from bed only half an hour before and decidedly not in the mood for any social interaction. The sun hadn’t even blinked a single ray, but his eyes had opened right up from militaristic bodily alarm and years of living in a home where there five hours of sleep were the allotted times for night rest, if any.

“That’s not very nice. I was just saying hello.”

“And I was replying in turn.” He sniffled in-between his sentences. Hak hoped he wasn’t getting a cold. The blanket he had in his room was thin, and he had already begun wearing his leather jacket to bed because of the unforgiving air. He decided he’d steal an extra comforter from the closet when Yoon wasn’t looking; if he asked, the whole house would know he couldn’t stand the cold by noon. A weakness. “Kija. That’s your name, right? If you’ve got time to say hello and stand around doing nothing, you’ve got enough time to get out of my way. I’ve got places to be. A job to do.”

Kija was affronted, and apparently about the wrong thing. “You’re doing your job?”

That ticked him off. He stalked past. _Of course_ he had been doing his job: he’d be a freeloader, otherwise, and as much as Hak liked getting things for free, he did not shirk his responsibilities, no matter how dull they were or how unwilling he felt.

Perimeter checks around the vicinity of the manor were completed before anyone awoke, which was sort of an easy thing to achieve considering half of the residents slept until late morning. He made sure the protective seals he’d put up when returning from the break were still strong and functioning. He’d set up security cameras at all points of entry, with access to live-streaming and recording through monitors in his room. It was a basic ordeal, but, as Hak learned over the years, the most effective kind.

He knew he was being testier than usual. Kija caught him in a mood. Most likely the footman had drawn the short straw during their What To Do About the Local Recluse meeting. It wasn’t his fault necessarily, except that Kija’s was one of the types of personalities Hak couldn’t handle without souring the air. Dealing with so much naiveté was not one of Hak’s strong points.

“I did not mean to offend you!” There he was again, springing up from behind Hak with his swept silk hair. Hak ought to call him determined, rather than meticulous. Kija said, “I was only surprised you would begin this early. It is most admirable. Most festivities start by sunrise in this household.”

“Sort of ironic in a vampire lair,” Hak muttered.

“Vampires may adapt better under the guise of the moon, but they are not naturally nocturnal.” Kija had to work to match Hak’s wide steps, and Hak felt a childish sort of glee in being a few centimeters taller.

They made it to the manor’s outskirts, where the garden was located. Still, the sun was dragging itself up, the moon at the opposite end of the sky, holding on despite the stars having retired. Orange-pink clouds lay in the west, and the sun imbued the white roses with color.

The manor was on a hilltop at the outskirts of the city and was only reachable by a singular stone path drawn down and about the slope. Hak personally believed the inaccessibility more of a hindrance than a means of protection—though not simply for the reason that he had, once, gotten lost on the journey over.

He’d thrown a rucksack over his shoulder before leaving his room. It held a few extra talismans he’d used to strengthen the exterior of the wing he had left unguarded. The back exit was accessible to one of the main artery hallways. The thicket of clinging vines hung low over the door, obscuring the entry from the outside. On the way out, he had to spit a few stray leaves out of his mouth. Hak figured the natural barrier and a few minor protection spells were enough to keep safe. He could conceal another security camera beneath all the foliage.

Although it was winter and white snow blanketed the area, the garden, almost magically, still had sprinkles of green and a bushel of flowers so pink-red Hak almost thought shards of daybreak had fallen from the sky.

“Camellia japonica,” Kija said. “They are one of the only breeds to grow this healthily in such a season. We in Japan refer to them as _tsubaki_ , or relating to the divine. I’m not quite versed in floriculture, so I can’t give you a thorough history. I apologize.”

“They’re red,” said Hak pointedly. Like most things in the house.

“The groundskeeper’s choice, surely.  You should see this garden in spring. It’s rich in the most exotic flora.”

“Groundskeeper, huh? He been here long?”

He neatly arranged the items in his bag as Kija stood close by. Hak still did not understand why the footman had approached him in the first place, or why Kija had bothered to keep him company—for that was what it had come to feel like.

“Age-wise? Shin-Ah is the youngest among us.”

“I mean, y’know—” Hak waved his hand in a flourish and hoped Kija took it as a gentle gesture to mean whatever it ought to mean. The cold was numbing Hak’s nose. He should have brought a scarf.

“If you were asking how his unification came about, I am only able to tell you what I know of.” There came the information, flowing. The man was still looking at the flowers. “Nearly three or so years ago, long before the Princess was relocated to this hideout, she brought him to us, in the dead of the night. I had already fledged by then, you see, and the lack of the need for a footman, added to my status as a royal’s vassal, gave me much more casual access in regards to the Princess.

“The strife between neighboring clans at the time were only brewing, so no one thought twice as the Princess continued adventuring. She’s the sort—ah, you should know, by now. She loves human culture. Every week she’d sneak away and wander. That time, she didn’t return alone. She said she found him on the street. He’d been injured, some way or other. I remember he had been bleeding. I even recall the smell. Of course, I myself am learned in the matter of control, but there were always younger fledgelings who were… ignorant. Mere cuts would drive them to madness.

“The Princess demanded that they not touch him. Her father had qualms about having a human in the premises at all. The king was known for being rather… high strung. Yet, though he may have disagreed, King Il knew when to act, and perhaps more importantly, when not to. The next morning, the Princess claimed Shin-Ah as her fourth and final vassal, and that was that.”

He wasn’t dressed for cold weather, but the formal attire Kija wore was unlike the foreign garbs the chef liked to parade in (when he wasn’t wearing his white double-breasted coat). It was unusual compared to the head butler’s perpetually rumpled frock coat. His cotton tunic suit, maybe ramie, was purer than Jae-Ha’s stained chef uniform. Much of his clothes were of that color, perhaps for unity, or some greater significance besides personal choice. Hak couldn’t begin a comparison between his down parkas and ruddy jeans. Suburban boy, to the bone; the leather was for show. And for the exorcisms.

It was unnerving to think that Kija had once been human.

He finally noticed Hak had packed back everything into his bag and was readying for the right moment to take his leave. The rear entrance ended up being fortified with four talismans and zero cameras. He had placed a tripwire nearer to the garden, dug beneath the wet soil just to have somewhere to plant it. You couldn’t see it now, with the snow.

“Could you make room for a break somewhere in your itinerary today?” Kija’s lily-white skin dusted in color and his long lashes caught white fallout. He told him, “I think it’s high time I challenge you to a duel.”

 

* * *

 

Those few months in the city hadn’t been long enough to settle. Hak wasn’t planning to get accustomed, either. He just needed the headspace. His last fight with Mundok wasn’t any different from the ones before, and simultaneously, not at all the same. He had wanted to quit, and he’d quit before, but he’d never done anything quite like this: the running away, the crap apartment, the inane job. His construction gig was glorified labor work, nothing hard to handle. Hak had it easy. The pay was decent, and no one cared about whatever hidden peach tree he’d just been plucked from.

Before he’d bolted from headquarters, he’d broken into one of Mundok’s old safe houses across town to grab concealment seals and staves and prayer beads and raid the pantry for non-perishables. Safe houses were mainly for stakeouts and ongoing investigations gone askew far enough to strictly not warrant leading an enemy back to HQ. With more and more apparitional types, the spy-like holdings were getting inessential, leaving them near-obsolete. Hak might have renounced his official exorcist status, but he wasn’t above operating for his own needs. 

That was when he found the glaive.

Exorcists in his family got physical the first chance they got. Despite the not-so-physical manifestations of most of their opponents, there came a time, every so often, when the blows would get harder or the hits would solidify, and they’d need more than beads and prayers to battle. Hak was the best of the best, if only because Mundok was getting old and soft and Tae-Woo was still young and heartless.

The glaive was unsullied and licked clean. He’d wielded European fauchards before, but as it was a Chinese Hsu Quandao, it was even better at stabbing things. Hak, from a line of staff-lovers, was smitten. He liked his toys. He liked this toy the most.

And when Kija challenged him months later, the Hsu Quandao was Hak’s first and only pick. Though no longer neat and sparkling, it still stabbed like avant-garde.

Hak dodged another slice with a tuck and roll, teasing at defense. “If you’d agreed on hand-to-hand, this’d be much easier for you.”

Kija heaved, sweat beading like pearls on his forehead, but his grip on the broadsword didn’t slacken. “Because I’m better at it?”

“Because then you’d have a fighting chance.”

Hak swung down on Kija’s non-dominant side, left vulnerable.

It was obvious even to an untrained eye Kija wasn’t a swordsman—but he’d insisted on using a weapon intent on an equal match. Kija kept up with Hak’s pace, and had it been anyone else, Hak would have thought the opponent was inhuman. Still, when it came to that stamina, Hak wasn’t confident that he could get by on his strength.

Pouncing sideways, Hak twirled his glaive and aimed for Kija’s open side. Kija retaliated and it was enough to jerk him back, not before he sent a kick to Kija’s chest. The kick landed, Kija fell backwards, and his sword scattered in a noiseless clatter across marble.

Marble! Hak shouldn’t have been surprised to know that past all the oak planks and drab chaises there was a gigantic ballroom the size of two basketball courts, just as museum-like as the rest of the manor. Better lit, though, and with less furniture—unless one counted the vast array of Western Medieval weapons showcased on the walls, messing up the _feng shui_. Creepy in general, and still somehow Hak wasn’t too fazed.

“We should take a break,” Hak relented, dropping beside Kija. They’d been at it for about three hours, long enough to shed layers and sweat. Kija was flat on the ground, an arm thrown across his eyes. He was panting hard and low, but Hak couldn’t make fun because he, too, was catching his breath. “You alive?”

“I have always been alive.” Kija was indignant, and therefore, alright. “This was supposed to be _your_ break. The sparring, I mean.”

“Well,” Hak concluded, “I need a break from this break.”

It wasn’t even funny, but Kija laughed, possibly because he was tired. He looked so young. He removed his arm and, now that his face could be seen again, free of imperfections and blemishes and wrinkles, Hak realized he didn’t even know how old Kija was. He couldn’t be much older than Hak, physically, but the tricky thing with bloodsuckers was that they kept their youth a little longer than most. He’d never tried pinning an age to any of them, and he supposed that was his way of impersonalizing. His head was ringing.

“How did you get here?” Hak asked. “To this point?”

Kija’s eyes strayed to the domed ceiling, detailed with Greco-Roman artwork of clouds and angels and gods among men.  Kija had a habit of that, staring off into nothing, a little like Yona at times. He chalked it off to the  demanding supernatural life.

He spoke with a careful practice, as if he’d recited it all before, though only as a confessor. “I was the sacrificial lamb. Those are Jae-Ha’s words. I try not to mirror his torturous prose, but I suppose the term is fitting, in a way. When I was younger I would have denied it, but now that I’m older…

“You see, I was born to a family with a certain pedigree amongst pureblood vampires. Traditionally, they are meant to cultivate the chosen ones into perfect candidates for purebloods. There are origins rooting back centuries. We were taught to believe that becoming fledgelings, especially for clan royalties, was the highest honor a mere human could achieve. To become one of them would be like serving gods. The powers and the strength were tantalizing to many, but I—I had really believed I would be nothing without an allegiance. My father had been chosen in his day. It was only rightful that I was also selected. When I came of age, five years ago, I was told I was compatible for a certain Koukan heiress.”

Hak felt his stomach curdle. “The Princess?”

“I was sent to the main house and—” Impossibly, Kija grinned, looking young again. The seriousness slipped away. “She took one look at me and began to cry. I hadn’t even reached her yet, and there she was, in tears. The Princess had apparently heard of my background and thought it perverse. I did not know what to do, or what to think. She refused to take me as a fledgling, even after I begged her to reconsider. I thought I’d been cast away, until she insisted we become friends. She was younger, as well, and still only had Zeno as a vassal. I had never really had a friend my age. Even during our unification ceremony the Princess had to make sure more than twice I was doing it out of my own free will and not for any other reason besides wanting to.” He murmured lovingly, “I couldn’t remember the last time someone had cried for me like that before that day.”

“That’s—” Hak’s voice was hoarse. “That’s something,” he said, and somewhere along the line he forgot to add any expletives. The kid had been in a _cult_ and was still able to…

The worst part was that he could imagine it: a trail of wet streaks on rosy cheeks, her bleeding-heart empathising. Even the unification ceremony brought the image of a younger, heedful Yona, canines out and sheepish, while oozing blood smeared on a soon-to-be-forever-youthful Kija’s pale neck.

The ringing in his head lapsed into gongs.

Hak still reeked of fighting and sweat. “Your power is enhanced strength,” he deduced, clearly not as a question. He received a hesitant nod. “Next time, I’ll take it as an insult if you’re not at your peak. I’ll use what I want. You use what you want. Let the best man win.”

Kija had been holding back. That was why he’d been having such a hard time. It made Hak angry. Did he think Hak, of all people, couldn’t have handled anything harder? If there was any human who could, it was him.

Begrudgingly, he could acknowledge that it came from well-meaning intention. It didn’t mean Hak wouldn’t complain about to Yoon tonight during their secret post-dinner human-only dessert.

Parting ways from Kija at the servants’ quarters, Hak ducked into his room, put away his glaive, and showered. The cold water raised goosebumps on his skin. He soaped and rinsed and all the while tried not to think that there was something very strange about living in a society whose lifeblood was literal.

 

* * *

 

Lunch was always a less formal affair than dinner, and they ate in a room everyone called the breakfast room: a decked-out parlor on the second floor with a balcony and a circular pine table, smack dab in the middle. The balcony was sanctioned off by a closed partition with dark curtains fettered to the sides, exposing the falling snow and blue skies on the other side of the glass. Seasoned wood was pitched into the fireplace every so often, dusty until it hit the flames and combusted to white and ash. It was by far the homiest room in the building, and Hak took refuge in the reading chair closest to the fireplace.

He tried not to expect Jae-Ha to have carried out all his responsibilities and hoped that Yoon felt generous enough to step in. His hopes were crowned. Earl grey tea and cucumber-watercress sandwiches. Hak was too tuckered to care they were served without crust and on a white ruffle platter.

“You two are getting on well,” commented Jae-Ha, finishing off a third serving. Hak and Kija had been in the middle of relaying which martial arts they’d been forced to wade through in the past. Jae-Ha continued, “So close after a single morning of combat? This is what youth should be about.”

“Jae-Ha is very skilled in hand-to-hand as well,” Kija said happily, as if just remembering. There was a crumb at the edge of his mouth. “Perhaps not as good as me, but well enough to mention.”

“Ouch. Just so you know, I only do things that are aesthetically pleasing, and most common forms of fighting lack grace.” Jae-Ha rounded on Hak, speaking in that goading way. “Finesse, you understand, is what we should consistently aim for.”

“You mean to say I’d beat you to a pulp,” said Hak, smirking.

Jae-Ha returned a stilted smile. “That, I highly doubt. Though if it were to happen, I would enjoy it nonetheless. In terms of weapons, I’m sure one person who could match you in skill would be the very man in our midst—with a squirrel on his napkin?”

“Shin-Ah!” Yoon cried suddenly. “What did I say about feeding Pukyuu on the table?”

Yoon shooed the squirrel off and Shin-Ah, sitting with his sixth or seventh sandwich, looked disappointed. Ao, the groundskeeper’s odd familiar, bounded around the rug until she climbed up one of Shin-Ah’s chair legs and perched on his shoulder. The rodent did not show any remorse and continued happily munching on watercress.

Only the five of them were present. The Princess rarely joined their breakfast room ventures, something that Hak found unusual since sitting around eating crumpets with friends sounded like the type of thing she’d jump at, given the chance. Two bites and Hak was done savoring the sandwich. His fingers twitched towards another.

“Zeno’s turn today?”

He’d make it easier on the rest if he stopped pretending he didn’t know what time of day Yona and the rest completed their feeding. From where he was blowing steam from his teacup, Yoon sent Hak calculating look.

“Well, it’s supposed to be—” Jae-Ha’s train of thought braked. The flash of hesitation on his face, though fleeting, did not go unnoticed. He recovered fluidly, saying, “It’s mine. Our dearest Yona wanted to practice painting, with Zeno as the critic. She’s embarrassed since it’s the only skill from her ongoing lessons she has yet to refine, and Zeno is a fine tutor. I was told he would send for me once I’m needed.”

“I wouldn’t have thought he’d willingly miss a meal,” Hak said. The butler was the type to eat anything and everything. Vampire fledglings were dependent on feedings, but most also fed their human bodies for rejuvenation. Zeno was simply a glutton.

“I brought him food earlier,” said Yoon, tipping his cup.

Kija suggested, “We could make an activity of it. After lunch, we can all convene in the ballroom. I must admit I have gotten rusty in certain areas. I’m sure that Hak would appreciate the opportunity to relieve tension.”

He gritted his teeth. “What tension?”

Jae-Ha slathered a biscuit with thick apple butter. He chewed and swallowed, baring his lean throat. “Interesting proposal, Kija sweetheart,” he said, and Kija frowned at the endearment. Hak was acutely aware of the chef ogling him intently and picked at some lint beneath his thumbnail. Jae-Ha said, “Exercise is vital to growing bodies. It would be nice to stretch my legs.”

He could turn any sentence bawdy. Hak stood to pick another sandwich, the last on the plate, and ignored Yoon’s recitations of table etiquette. Kija said Jae-Ha had been troubled in childhood, which was why he learned to fight without proper lessons, and Jae-Ha said the tea was getting cold, neither confirming nor denying the implied past delinquency. Yoon gathered the plates, and Shin-Ah, wrangled by a sense of kinship, helped.

 

* * *

 

Jae-Ha was a defensive fighter, blocking with his arms. That seemed to be all he used them for. His kicks were no joke and toppled Hak’s formation more than once through brute force. Kija fared a bit better. They evened each other out, despite Jae-Ha’s constant babbling. It wasn’t Hak’s place but he relayed commands which they followed without complaint, Kija’s obedience borne from embarrassment and Jae-Ha’s from amusement. 

Something like homesickness bloomed inside Hak. There was no Tae-Woo to badger him for a spar, no Han-Dae to sweep the dojo as punishment for sleeping through breakfast. Mundok’s cackling voice no longer echoed behind him. The ballroom did not carry voices and the intonation of his blade against Shin-Ah’s was a foreign note.

Instead, the brawls were distantly invigorating. Kija swept Jae-Ha’s foot off his chest and leaned in for an uppercut, and in time was blocked with a roundhouse kick. Hak and Shin-Ah sparred evenly. Yoon dog-eared a page of a tattered novel before humoring them with his cheers. 

Hours later, Zeno the head butler, in his mussed button up and fraying slacks, tore his way into the ballroom singing. He summoned Jae-Ha upstairs with a pat on the back then went to dawdle beside Yoon, who had begun reading again. Hak sacrificed a few seconds during his fight to ask Zeno how the painting had gone, but received indiscernible laughter in response. There wasn’t a splatter of dye on his clothes.

When Jae-Ha finally escorted Yona down, her dainty little hand on his outstretched elbow like westerners at their fancy balls, it was minutes before dinner was due. She picked up a bow off the wall of weapons and, after much coercing, they watched her jab arrows at the fattest cherub in the ceiling. Her smile was sharper than the arrowheads. Her laugh could turn the marble beneath their feet to quicksand.

At dinner, Jae-Ha produced what sufficed as shepherd’s pie, and Hak ate despite preferring Japanese food. This time, Yona joined them. Her plate remained empty, placed on the table for show rather than practicality. Zeno began to tell embarrassing stories of all the times Yona had tried running away to live with the humans while Yoon tried very hard not to snicker.

Hak tried engaging Shin-Ah in a conversation about footwork, but when that didn’t pan out, Hak gave Ao a large chunk of pie. That action took place under the table, though, in case Yoon held grudges. Jae-Ha made pass after pass at Yona. It could have only been taken as foolishness, only Hak could tell that there was something there, something underlying, just like Kija’s pointless gazing and Shin-Ah’s unbridled adoration.

The homesickness had been supplanted by something else.

 

* * *

 

Hak’s door slammed around three in the morning. He pried his eyes open and wrestled the sheets away. Kija was standing by, breathless, eyes wide. The laptop on the table was humming. Floating inches above Hak’s head were two talismans, glowing fiercely.

He cursed, shrugged on an overcoat, and grabbed his glaive.

“How many?” he asked, anger and panic rising. He’d slept through it. He’d relaxed. How could he have been so lenient?

The footman was wearing a surcoat over his pajamas and his hair had been hurriedly braided. The bandages on his hands were loose. “That’s what I came to confirm with you.”

Hak and Kija checked the feeds. “East and front entrances are clear. I can sense my wards are still up, but the ones out in the south are down. The garden’s silent alarm was triggered. Rear entrance barriers are starting to break, but no visuals. _Damn_ _it_. I was about to set up a camera in the morning.”

“None are inside yet. There.” Kija pointed at the west wing’s camera feed, nearest to their quarters and closest to the gardens. They were able to view a high reaching 180 degrees from the position of the camera on the old gazebo in the center of the garden. Hak had gotten it up there by climbing its lattice—something Yoon had disproved of and made him hack away the clinging vines as punishment. His equipment might not have been up-to-date, but night vision was their best asset. In black and green, the monitor showed what looked to be Jae-Ha and a masked man pitted against ten or eleven lithe figures amongst the camellias. “We split up. Shin-Ah saw them coming and Jae-Ha quickly went to assist. I had to come here first.”

“He saw them coming?”

“That’s his ability, yes.” Kija, almost unconsciously, wrapped and unwrapped the bandages on his fists. “Zeno and Yoon are with the Princess. They will keep her safe.”

It sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. Hak figured it physically hurt Kija to be apart from the Princess. Zeno came across as flaky, but with Yoon and Yona at risk, there was no other choice but to believe in him.

Still angry, Hak dug in his drawers and fished out a small mirror. The rims were rusted gold and a dark red ribbon hung from its back. It was blurred by dust, so he pulled his sleeve across the surface and rubbed it clean.

Kija peered at the mirror warily. “What is that?”

“My _hôkyô_ ,” Hak began, but there was no time to explain. “What I’m about to do is unorthodox, but it’s our only shot.”

He focused. He breathed. The mirror showed what Hak needed to see: a clear view of the rear entrance. Another dozen or so intruders were working at Hak’s initial seals and succeeding, which confirmed that they weren’t ordinary human robbers. Only about half were armed, but that held no comfort if they were also vampires.

“Amazing,” muttered Kija. He focused on the numbers. “Twelve at that end. With Jae-Ha and Shin-Ah preoccupied, we should prioritize stopping this group. Perhaps six to one.”

“Sure. But if I take on more, it’s because you’re too slow.”

Kija unwrapped his hands for the last time—a finality. He flexed his hands. “We must go at once.”

The servants’ quarters were a series of rooms conjoined to a single decrepit hallway that twisted and turned, showcasing more rooms than they had use for. As far as Hak knew, he and the only other occupants resided mostly in the west wing, nearest to the main hall where the grand staircase was easily accessible.

When they reached the exit, Hak held up a hand. He heard the strangers outside scuffle and swear, banging at the invisible barrier. He could hear chanting too, so there was someone equipped for the supernatural. He motioned at Kija and counted to three. He swung the door open, released the seal, and attacked.

The assailants were similar in build and height. Their clothes were dark, cut for camouflage. What they lacked in experience they made up for with enhanced speed and strength, but Hak was already counting his chickens by deciding which unfortunate would be granted the first honor of feeding his blade.

Hak zig-zagged through the mass and went right for the one with the fancy _shakujō_ scepter, its six rings dangling precariously as the man chanted a memorization unpracticed. Seeing the wannabe made Hak’s anger flare; his profession detested moderates picking up sutras and spells when they had no clan affiliation. People like that didn’t they know what they were getting into—taking the holy practice of exorcism and using it for something sacrilegious could lead to immense danger, or in this case, immense stupidity.

He pushed the fake against the vine-ridden wall and crushed his windpipe in a chokehold. The _shakujō_ fell and lost its light. Hak swung the sharp end of his glaive into an incoming rogue and dug deep. He dodged another, coming at him with a sword. Hak cut him down.

The cold night air invaded his skin. Snow was crushed to muddy puddles under his soles. Their tussling created a dirt trackway amidst the ice. Hak turned in time to witness Kija ram his fist through a man’s shoulder blade, smooth as a needle through cloth. At the end of the garden, trampling through ruined red petals, the other two fledgelings were down to only three assailants.

Jae-Ha flew into an alarmingly showy spinning kick that threw one enemy into another. He was wearing dense knee-high boots Hak had never seen before. The chef drew back his foot and knocked out the first intruder, then pulled out shuriken to hurl them at the other’s calves.

Shin-Ah was at a standstill with the same rogue, even after Hak took down two more bodies. The masked man had his sword up and level in position with a slight hesitation that made him falter before finishing it off.

On their end, Hak and Kija worked efficiently and cleanly. Within minutes, the assailants were defeated and wrangled like cattle. Hak did a sweep of the immediate area and found there was none but the two dozen on the premises. He closed his eyes to put up another seal before anything else.

When he looked back to the garden, Shin-Ah and Jae-Ha were nowhere to be seen. Kija, refreshed—not breathless like he’d been this morning—told him Jae-Ha had jumped to the rooftop to let Shin-Ah pinpoint any more assailants and Hak tried to take this new information in stride. Jumped, he thought, like a monkey.

“We should check on the Princess,” said Kija.

Hak didn’t have patience for words. He nodded. As if summoned by Kija’s nerves, Yona and Yoon appeared, flanked by Zeno. The Princess had her bow and a full cache of arrows.

The two jogged to meet them, melted ice slushing under foot. They were all in their night clothes, and it made Hak want to laugh at the surrealism. He examined the others for any potential injuries discreetly as he could. Kija fluttered over the Princess in a flurry of agony.

Tying up the remaining intruders, Hak admitted that he should have been more watchful. “I could have prevented this if I’d prepared more seriously,” he said, knotting the ropes. He stood and held his Hsu Quando close and bowed. “I apologize.”

He was surprised when Yoon smacked his head. “As if! Stop taking all the blame. You didn’t send these losers, did you? Are you trying to be the main character, you unruly beast?”

Hak was about to give a scathing reply when he saw teardrops forming in the kid’s eyes. He rubbed his head instead, and Yoon sniffled.

“They’re from Xing,” said Kija. “You saw the emblems on their leathers?”

“Queen Kouren wouldn’t send a troupe of unruly thugs,” said the Princess. “Her sister would never allow—no, the Queen _herself_ would not authorize an act so disorganized or so brute. They must have come on their own. Xing is a very proud clan. I’ll have to inform Tao.”

“Xing’s on your side, then?” asked Hak, thinking that an allied clan would be beneficial.

“Oh, no,” she replied airily, waving a hand. “Kouren would much rather come to flay me with her own broadsword. Much more honorable, in her opinion.”

“Honorable,” blanched Hak. “Of course."

Jae-Ha, carrying Shin-Ah on his back, dropped down from the rooftop in a gentle thud beside them. Hak did not flinch, but still needed to get used to Jae-Ha’s movements. He also couldn’t let Jae-Ha, of all people, clue into his surprise, or he’d never hear the end of it.

The chef reported, “Shin-Ah no longer sees any threats. At this point I’m sure we’ve cleared out all the hostiles in the area. All we can do now is to keep constant and keep vigilance.  Hopefully it will be easier, with our new exorcist friend by our side.” Jae-Ha winked at Hak, who grunted in reply. Jae-Ha said, “It’s been a long night. Up for a midnight snack, Princess?”

Ignoring the Princess’s polite decline and Kija’s driveling, Hak turned. Yoon was tending to Shin-Ah, who probably had the messiest countenance. There was a clean gash on his upper arm and small splatters of blood were drying his shirt, and, though he was fine, it didn’t stop Yoon and Yona from fretting. The presumably ceremonial mask was now sitting in Shin-Ah’s lap as Shin-Ah stayed on the porch steps, allowing Yoon to grumble and dress bandages. The headdress attached to the mask also had foreign blood, matting its fur.

“Saw you against that garden group,” said Hak, nodding at Shin-Ah’s sheathed sword. “You’re skilled.”

The groundskeeper smiled shyly, a strange contrast of innocence clashing with his outward appearance. Hak was going to question his strange bout of hesitation after striking the last assailant during the scuffle, but he changed his mind when he saw the smile. Ao upended an acorn and Shin-Ah murmured his thanks.

Kija asked what to do with the intruders. Most were alive and bound by holy water-drenched ropes, courtesy of Jae-Ha, but the ones that Hak had dealt with were dead bodies. He soon learnt that Yona had a strict policy concerning fatalities. He was relieved that no one had rebuked him just yet. Unlearning a habit was much more difficult than the reverse.

“Zeno will bring them up to the main house!” said the butler. He was unconcerned about the lines of alien blood above his right brow and cheek, confirming a suspicion that at least one had snuck past Hak and the others. “Miss Kouren can collect if she wishes, but Zeno thinks she won’t vouch for these whippersnappers after they disobeyed her orders. In that event, the main house will decide!”

“And after that?” Hak asked. The main problem hadn’t been the intruders. It was that they’d found the manor in the first place. Even if they were only lowly, indepent thugs, somehow, they had found Yona’s hiding place, and there was the chance that others knew as well. “This place is compromised. Will you move?”

The rest hadn’t reached their conclusions as quickly as Hak had and began making their cases at the same time. Kija agreed on relocating for the Princess’ safety, but Jae-Ha and Yoon were hesitant. Shin-Ah kept his opinion to himself and Zeno merely looked to Yona, waiting.

As the final voice, Yona considered long and hard. “I am not running away again. I may be my father’s daughter, but first and foremost, I am Princess Yona of Kouka. If more come, let them. I am not weak, and nor are any of you. The reason Xing attacked today was because they thought that, if they killed me, all they would need to do is lay siege to the main house for the Kouka territory to become theirs. They were wrong. If any clan had overstepped their boundaries, they would have been annihilated. Soo-Won… He has his plans.”

Her hands shook as she spoke the name. Hak was puzzled until Jae-Ha, sounding anxious, asked, “Does the king know where we are?”

“All of the main house know the little miss is in hiding,” supplied Zeno. “But it’s on a need-to-know basis. Zeno makes sure.”

“I thought he killed your dad,” said Hak.

Yona’s demeanor shifted to something raw, vulnerable.

“Because the throne is not my intention, Soo-Won has no interest in me,” said the Princess, sparing a glance downward. Even if she was speaking the truth, there was no relief in her voice. “But I can’t—I can never forgive him for what he’s done.”

Here was a well, full and cool, except Hak was ignorant as to when it would run dry, and he was unable to fathom its depth. Everything he’d done so far—the friendly sparring, the tea and little cucumber sandwiches, the life story swaps—it had been building towards something he couldn’t prepare for. Hak didn’t understand why he’d stayed. Habit, possibly. Work kept him moving. Other than that, there had been no real reason, except for maybe proving a singular point to his grandfather. The money, he could have gotten by some other, less life-threatening way. He had nothing to prove and even less to gain. They were all tied to each other in a way that he could never touch, even if he wanted to try.

But Hak wanted to try. Even worse, he could find reasons to stay; reasons racked up for every minute he’d spent in their presence. Perhaps the final reason was before him that very second.

Hak let his mouth run free. “Sounds like an ass.”

There was an excruciatingly long beat before Yona blinked away her cloudiness, then turned to Zeno to discuss transportation. Yoon started on Jae-Ha’s wounds, springing Ao on him when he refused to sit still and springing Shin-Ah on him when he began to strip unnecessarily. The groundskeeper retreated once the chef called his eyes wonderous, and Zeno was knocked into the fray. A Xing rebel groaned in the background before slipping back to dreamland.

Above, the moon was white and ominous. Dawn was for beginnings, but it could also start in the darkest hours, without a single dot of light, save for the stars.

Kija’s rebandaged knuckle grazed Hak’s. Had Hak seen understanding in his gaze, he would have broken eye contact, left him in the dust, and yet what lay there instead was—solidarity. Kija didn’t have to understand why he was where he was, as long as he was there. By that, he might as well have said, _You are not alone._

“Seven to five, by the way,” Hak said. “I won.”

By that, he might as well have said, _I know_.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, Zeno and Jae-Ha transported the bodies and intruders to the main house. Yoon prepared breakfast in the chef’s place; smoke floated through a crack in the kitchen window, thinning as it rose. In the garden patches, Shin-Ah mended the tills, disposing what had been ruined in the scuffle and replanting anew. Beside him were bags of fertilizer and seed, gardening gloves and shovels. The camellias would be better sown in spring, but even Hak knew its value amongst the snow.

Hak found the Princess in the gazebo, watching Shin-Ah work; Yoon had forbidden her from dirtying her clothes by helping. Ao was in her lap, sleeping for once, and Yona petted her absentmindedly. Hak didn’t sit beside her. He leaned against the lattice and crossed his arms. Together, they imagined the seeds taking root in the soil’s hidden warmth.


End file.
